Friday Reads 9/17/2022

I was suprisingly busy the last couple of days and I forgot to post. Expect a couple of catch up posts today, starting with this one.

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo - I started this yesterday at my mother's hair appointment. I am now half way through it. I expected it to be dense and weird and hard to follow. On the contrary, it's weird, yes, but it's easy to read and extremely interesting. The Great Gatsby is told by Jordan Baker, but not the parts told in the original. Jordan tells us the story from her point of view and all the conversations and machinations that happened behind the scenes. I'm really enjoying it.

A Companion to Jane Austen by Claudia L. Johnson and Clara Tuite - Of couse, I'm still working through this. I haven't picked it up in a couple of days, but I will probably get through 3 or 4 more essays this weekend.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt - I'm still picking through this one, too. It wasn't on my TBR, so it's less of a priority to finish, but I am enjoying it. The characters are horrendous and also fascinating.

The Hawthorne Legacy by Jennifer Lynn Barnes - This is the second book in the series that starts with The Inheritance Games which gives serious Knives Out vibes. I'm hoping this one is as much fun as the first on. The third one just came out, or is coming out in the next couple of weeks.

Matrix by Lauren Groff - Since I haven't had much recent practice with literary fiction so I left this one for after the YA mystery above. Make sure there is a gap between Chosen and Beautiful and this one. But I am pretty excited to get into this one about a badass nun in the middle ages in France who creates a refuge for women in her convent.

And that will finish out all the books on my TBR. I don't really expect to finish the Jane Austen companion this month, and The Secret History is questionable. I've come a long way from last week when I wasn't sure I could read the whole TBR. I'm pretty stoked!